Under the Gun
by foxyx
Summary: Beth's POV during the kidnap and the events following. (One-shot for now. Has potential for continuation.)


**Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead or its characters.**

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"Go back!" Beth screeched.

When she didn't receive a reply, she kicked hard at the back of the seat in front of her. "Did you not just hear me?! I said go back!"

Still no response.

There was the all too familiar click of a gun being cocked, and the tip of her firearm thrust itself threateningly into the passive man's temple.

"Don't make me repeat myself." Her tone was cold, dead serious.

"Woah- H-Hey... let's not do anything reckless, now. C-Can't you see I'm trying to help you? It's too late for your friend! Going back will just get me killed – get us _both _killed."

"That's _my_ problem. I didn't ask for your help, now let me out!" She dug the weapon harder into the side of his head.

"My Lord," he pleaded out to an unseen entity, "I do the Christian thing, try to redeem myself from my past sins, and this is the thanks I receive? Is it too late? Is that what you're trying to tell me... that I have already been condemned for all eternity?"

Beth's expression transformed into a look of utter bewilderment. For some reason, an image of her father suddenly popped into her head, and she wasn't sure why, but it only aggravated her even more.

"Yes... it must be," the man continued, completely lost in his daze. "Very well then, I shall accept whatever punishment you have planned for me." He shut his eyes and lifted both hands off the wheel of the car without question, seeming very at peace with his sudden decision.

"Are you crazy?!" Beth exclaimed, hastily dropping her gun and lunging in between the two seats to grab a hold of the loose wheel. She did the best she could to keep the car properly aligned on the road, but it was extremely difficult from her awkward position, and the man's foot wasn't letting up its hold on the gas pedal.

"Step on the brakes!" she demanded.

"Don't worry, it'll be quick this way."

Beth felt the vehicle speed up as the man pressed even harder down on the pedal. She cursed under her breath and while maintaining one hand's grip on the wheel, she quickly reached down with the other onto the passenger seat where her fallen gun sat. She used all her strength to rear the end of the handle into the side of the man's head. If that hadn't been enough to knock him out, his head clashing hard with the driver's window definitely got the job done. Not wasting a moment to check, Beth tossed the gun aside once again and quickly squeezed her petite body through the two seats. Lacking the time or ability to move the man out of the seat, she wedged herself in between his lap and the wheel, and kicked his foot off of the gas pedal. When she returned her attention to the road, it was a moment too late and the front of the car met a lone walker head-on. The sudden impact jerked her forward and she instinctively swerved the car off the side of the road as the creature slid across the windshield. Her foot came down hard on the brake pedal, and she manoeuvred the car through a wide cluster of trees before eventually skidding to a halt some distance away from the road.

Steam rose steadily from the front of the car, accompanied with a faint audible sizzle. Beth didn't move from her position for the next minute or two, taking a moment to catch her breath and replay everything that had just happened. Her hands maintained their grip on the steering wheel as if her life depended on it.

Just as her nerves were beginning to settle down, they shot back up again when the thought of Daryl crept into her mind. The last she saw of him was him being bombarded by a horde of walkers. She was trying to reach him but he kept yelling at her to get out, and that he would meet her outside. She didn't want to leave him, but one of the walkers had sprung up on her in that moment, and she was forced back into the kitchen. With no weapons on hand and a weak ankle burdening her, she struggled against the walker, and eventually collapsed underneath the sheer weight of it. The sound of a gunshot was all she heard after that, and suddenly the struggle was over. A tall man had come to her aid, soon dragging the dead walker off of her body, and offering her a hand up. 'My friend- we need to help him,' she told him. 'He's outside,' he said. 'Come with me,' he said. Believing him, she grabbed her bag from under the table and followed along, out the back door into the night. It was then that she realized it had been a lie, it was only the two of them outside, and he was leading them towards a car. 'You tricked me! He's still in there, I gotta go help him!' She tried to turn back, but the man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards the car. 'No! It's too late, he's gone. We have to go while we still have a chance!' She didn't even think twice before swinging her bag hard at the man's head. It collided, but he quickly snatched it, and tossed it somewhere far over his shoulder. She didn't get another chance to react before he grabbed both her arms and forced her into the back of the car. He rounded to the front seat, and since the car had been left running, he drove off immediately after slamming the door shut. Beth tried opening the side doors but they had been child-locked. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the lap of an unconscious man in the front seat of a car, stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Finally, her grip on the steering wheel relaxed, and she slowly turned her head back to get a good look at the unconscious man behind her. He couldn't be any older than thirty, she thought, as her eyes roamed over his clean-cut features. She suppressed the sudden urge to spit in his face, and just settled with a furious glare.

"Idiot," she muttered, and fumbled for the door handle. Pulling on it, she cranked the door open with her shoulder and stumbled clumsily out of the vehicle. She held onto the door for support, to ease the pressure off her damaged ankle. Worry was painted all over her face as her eyes frantically scanned the area for potential threats, but the darkness made it very difficult for her to see anything. The half-moon and the car's high-beams were the only source of light in that area.

The realization of how alone she suddenly was hit her harder than she ever could have expected, and a familiar, undesired emotion began burning up in her eyes. She looked back again at the man passed out in the front of the car, and wanted so bad to just leave him there, but then she thought harder about his honest intentions and all the religious gibberish he had spewed out only a moment ago. Perhaps he was in fact 'one of the good ones' and just a big coward. But then she thought back to Daryl and how she wanted nothing more in that moment than to be back there with him, trying her best not to wonder whether he even made it out alive. But she couldn't help it, the thought invaded her mind like a virus, and that was the final straw that forced her to relinquish the repression of her tears.

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"Hello? ... Hello?! Someone! Anyone...! Help!"

"Shut up!" Beth hushed. There was a light screeching sound of metal against metal as she popped the hood of the trunk, revealing the distraught man. He hurried to climb out of the tight space, looking as though he had just seen a ghost.

"Sorry. Claustrophobic?" Beth questioned, but feeling the very opposite of sorry.

"_Why _would you lock me in the trunk?!"

"Safety measures. For when I left you." Softly, she shut the hood of the trunk, then turned around to kick dirt into the hole in the ground where she had made a little fire, extinguishing it.

"Wait- left?"

Beth ignored him and bent over to pick up her black bag sitting on the ground nearby. She slung it over her shoulder and turned to stare at the bewildered man.

"Your bag... you went back?! But, your friend... was he...?"

"He wasn't there," Beth uttered quickly, not wanting a reminder of the despair she felt when she initially came to that discovery not too long ago.

"But you're going to help me find him," she piped up, pushing the negative thoughts aside while trying to hold onto whatever amount of hope she had remaining.

"Oh, I don't think... no, I can't..." He looked down at his trembling hands, and Beth could tell that he really was just a big coward after all.

"Listen, I appreciate what you tried to do... helpin' me and all, but you shoulda left me there. That man was the only person I had... and if he- well, I bet he's all alone now, thinkin' I just abandoned him." She was making her best attempt to be patient and understanding with the man, but it was hard when the back of her mind kept blaming him for what happened. "I get that you're scared, and that you just wanna run back home and hide, or pray, but sooner or later you're gonna have to get used to what's going on, and learn to take responsibility." She subconsciously looked down at the cluster of bracelets along her wrist and fumbled with the beads.

"How are you so confident that you'll find him? That he's even alive?"

There was a small glint in her eyes as they flashed up to meet his. "I have a little thing called faith."

Beth reached into her backpack and pulled out an extra pistol. She held it out towards the man. "Can I trust you?" she asked very seriously, not breaking eye contact for even a second.

There was a long hesitation as the man stared down at the gun, realizing it was his own when he patted down his pockets only to find it missing. He swallowed noticeably, and eventually reached out his hand to reclaim his firearm, staring at it as though it was a foreign object.

"Not sure how aware you are, but noise attracts them, so only fire that if absolutely necessary. Here, use this mainly," she said as she pulled out a spare knife from the bag and handed it to him.

He accepted the knife, looking more disturbed by it than he was the gun. "You want me to... get close to them?" He looked to her with complete shock.

Beth raised her eyebrows. "You've only been using a gun up until now?"

He nodded.

"Wow... we've got a lot of work to do." Now she knew how Daryl must have initially felt with her. But before she allowed herself to fall into the trap of reminiscing about him, she quickly brushed it off and focused her attention on the task at hand.

"Let's get going, the more time we waste, the harder it will be to find him," she said, picking her feet up and taking off in the direction she knew lead back to the main road. She could still feel some of the pain and discomfort in her ankle when she walked, but it had definitely improved from the day before.

"We're not driving?" The man called out to her, following promptly after a momentary delay.

"It's dead."

"You walked all the way back there with your injury?"

"It took a while, but thankfully we weren't too far off," she said.

There was a silent pause before he spoke up again. "I'm sorry..." he muttered.

Beth turned her head back to look at him and the guilt on his face was apparent. She wanted to tell him not to worry about it, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it, so she returned her attention forward and simply allowed him to wallow in his regret. She was generally a forgiving person, but after all she had been through recently, forgiveness was the last act on her list of recovery. What happened with her dad was one thing, but this was entirely different. Daryl and her really connected over the past couple of weeks, something she honestly never fathomed happening. She came to care about him in a way she never imagined she would, and before she knew it he suddenly became the most important person in her life. Of course, her sister Maggie was still very important to her as well, but despite what hope she had, she still had to mentally prepare herself for the worst. But Daryl, he was real, he was there, the only one she had. Knowing how capable he was gave her more hope than anything, that he made it out alive, and that she still had a chance of finding him.

"Oh, how rude of me... I never asked, what is your name?" the man suddenly spoke up, withdrawing Beth from her inner musings.

"I'm Beth," she admitted, "and yourself?"

"Gabriel."

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**A/N: I'm no author and I haven't written in years, but I just had this sudden urge to write up my own little take of what I think should have happened during and after the kidnapping, from Beth's POV. I like the idea of her being with Gabriel, and having read the comics I think it could be a really interesting dynamic, with him being the coward and her having to step up her game to be the stronger one out of the two (sort of like taking on the same role Daryl did with her). I'm leaving this as a one-shot for now, but I have a couple of other ideas that might inspire me to do a continuation of it, but I'm also very bad at committing, so we'll see.**


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